Biologist and anti-theist Richard Dawkins was roundly criticised for sharing a satirical YouTube song, Feminists and Islamists. But, as the song says, Islam and feminism (or at least, its contemporary “Third Wave” variant) “have so very much in common”. Not least is their utter determination that Islam and Muslims must not and cannot ever be criticised.
Especially don’t ask Western Third Wave feminists to even acknowledge the blatant and violent misogyny that characterises too much of the Islamic world. They’re too busy making YouTube videos ranting against imaginary oppressions like “manspreading” to be bothered even noticing such trivialities as Muslim women being burned alive for daring to accuse rapist imams. quote.
The news has recently started filtering through to the Western media, but thus far prominent feminists have been noticeably silent. At the time of writing, there has been no mention of Nusrat’s murder in the major third wave feminist websites Jezebel, Feministing, and Everyday Feminism. Notably, the radical feminist platform Feminist Current has reported on the case—this is the site edited by Canadian journalist Meghan Murphy, considered so reprehensible by Twitter that she has been banned.
[This] pokes at a particularly sore spot for the Regressive Left. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Nusrat’s murderers were partially motivated by a particularly conservative strain of Islam that seeks to impose brutal restrictions on women. Yes, it is common for victims of sexual violence to be punished for speaking out, whether or not they live in Muslim-majority countries. But the ferocity of the response to Nusrat’s disclosure went well beyond what we see in the West. end quote
Unfortunately, as this article shows, aversion to even the mildest criticism of Islam has been inculcated into Western ‘liberals’. Even those feminists who can wrench themselves into, however mildly, criticising Islam still have to pay lip service to the ‘Islamophobia’ narrative.
Even when trying to draw attention to the violent abusiveness of Muslim men, this author, almost by reflex, has to make exaggerated accusations against the West; as if that counts somehow as ‘balance’. Women who speak out about sexual violence in the West are not punished. Quite the contrary: as everything from “#MeToo” McCarthyism to the reprehensible “Mattress Girl” case shows, even women who are proven liars about sexual violence are celebrated and rewarded in the West. quote.
[I]n response to the Christchurch attacks in March, some non-Muslim New Zealand women, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, chose to wear a hijab to demonstrate their solidarity with the victims of the atrocity and their families. The act was clearly well intentioned…but it was also tone deaf because, at the same time that New Zealand women were choosing to wear the hijab, Iranian feminists were desperately fighting to be free of it. Dozens of Iranian women have been arrested…[some] have been tortured in prison. Did the New Zealand women who donned the hijab know about this brave campaign? I’m guessing not. end quote.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m guessing they chose to ignore it, because it doesn’t fit their narrative. quote.
The sticky issue for feminists who are also part of the Regressive Left is that the perpetrators of abuse against non-white women are mostly non-white men…And God help you if it’s a case in which white women have been victimised by non-white men…evidence suggests that immigrant men from North Africa and the Middle East are overrepresented among the perpetrators […] in the dramatic rise in sex crimes in Sweden.
Following the [mass rape] incident in Cologne, Gaby Hinsliff asked in the Guardian whether the attackers might have been motivated by resentment of German women who “with their expensive smartphones” were so noticeably wealthier than the men who assaulted them. end quote.
Imagine trying to apply this victim-blaming narrative in any other context. Imagine a white men’s rights activist even daring to suggest that rape committed by white men is a form of rebellion against ‘oppression’. Not that this racist double standard is anything new: Eldridge Cleaver was praised by the New York Times when he boasted that raping white women was “an insurrectionary act”. Even in 2011, a Times writer tried to shift blame onto an 11 year old Hispanic girl after she was gang-raped by nearly 30 black men.
Even in spite of the damning case against Western feminists, the author still ends up peddling the narrative that criticising Muslim men is somehow playing into the hands of a largely imaginary “far right”. quote.
Leftist commentators may think that by underplaying the abuses perpetrated by men of colour they are striking a blow against racism, but in fact they are more likely to be unwittingly acting as recruiters for the Far Right.
quillette
The fact that this author falsely smears Tommy Robinson as “far right” and wrings her hands asserting that acknowledging the truth of the brutal misogyny of too many Muslim men somehow ’empowers’ the ‘far right’ shows that, far from rampant ‘Islamphobia’, reflexive aversion to any criticism of Islam is deeply ingrained in ‘liberal’ Western circles.